Maxima Library

Carry Nation is on the loose again, breaking up discos, smashing topless bars, radicalizing women as she preaches clean living to men more intent on booze and babes. As for Mrs. Gulliver, her patience with her long-voyaging Lemuel is wearing thin: money is short and the kids can't even remember what their dad looks like. And what of Tonto, the ever-faithful companion, turning forty without so much as a birthday phone call from that masked man? In fifteen short fictions, Karen Joy Fowler turns accepted norms inside out and fairy tales upside down, pushing us to reconsider all our unquestioned verities and proving once more that she is among our most subversive writers of fiction. Filled with imaginative virtuosity, replete with wicked insights and cunning conceits, Black Glass delivers everything readers have come to expect of her fiction.

In a brilliant, wide-ranging anthology, Strahan presents stories by authors as diverse as Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Bear, and Paul Di Filippo. Ellen Klages contributes “Lotion,“ a story about imaginary numbers and the strange powers of math, in which a young girl discovers the magical potential of pure math. Ellen Kushner’s “Dolce Domum” is, perhaps, not about what its characters think it is. Bear’s “Swell” is a fairy tale about a musician seeking her voice, in which a mermaid’s gift is not as wonderful as at first glance it seems. Molly Gloss’ “The Visited Man” presents a lonely pensioner who lives upstairs from le douanier Rousseau and the relationship that develops after the painter brings the retiree a stray cat. As for the previous Eclipse anthologies, Strahan has picked stories whose authors care about both the craft of storytelling and the stories they tell. Each piece is distinctive and haunting.

Michael Cunningham, Francine Prose, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, and more than thirty other extraordinary writers celebrate fairy tales in this thrilling new volume. Inspire by everything from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" and "The Little Match Girl" to Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" and "Cinderella" to the Brothers Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" and "Rumpelstiltskin" to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico, here are stories that soar into boundless realms, filled with mischief and mystery and magic, and renewed by the lifeblood of invention. Although rooted in hundreds of years of tradition, they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature.

It’s been seven years since we last published a story by the brilliant author Karen Joy Fowler (“Liserl,” July 1990), and we are delighted to welcome her back to our pages. Ms. Fowler has written a highly regarded short story collection, Artificial Things (Bantam 1986), and two novels (which were put out by Holt)— Sarah Canary, a New York Times 1991 notable book, and The Sweetheart Season. The latter novel is a story “packed with history, baseball, and useful housekeeping tips.” Published last fall, it was also listed as a 1996 New York Times notable book. The author is at work on a new novel, but we hope she will continue to find time for her remarkable short fiction as well.

This fourth volume of the year's best science fiction and fantasy features thirty stories by some of the genre's greatest authors, including Jonathan Carroll, Neil Gaiman, Kij Johnson, Kelly Link, Paul McAuley, RJ Parker, Robert Reed, Rachel Swirsky, Catherynne M. Valente, and many others.

is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow.